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Saturday, 13 June 2015

The Weekend Read: Parliament will debate assisted suicide legislation this year as a Private Members Bill

The Labour MP for Wolverhampton South West, Rob Marris, is to bring forward a Private Members Bill to address the issue of assisted suicide. He came first in the Private Members Bill ballot last week. He will, so the reports say, use the Bill pioneered in the House of Lords last year by Lord Falconer.

A few key points to add and to note: -- This is a clearly very contentious issue. - Private Members Bills rarely get through both houses of parliament unless there is universal support, so I believe that prospects of success are very limited.- The matter was put to the PM on Wednesday at PMQs: he replied as follows: - "On this issue I very much agree with my hon. Friend, which is that I do not support the assisted dying proposals that have come out of the other place. I do not support euthanasia. I know that there are imperfections and problems with the current law, but I think that these can be dealt with sensitively and sensibly without having a new law that actually brings in euthanasia. As she says, I think the problem is the pressure that is then put on frail, elderly people to take a decision that they might not want to go ahead with."